Pawlenty Dumps Tea Party On Defense Spending

March 17, 2011 12:55 pm ET —
Matt Finkelstein

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has been touring the
country in advance of an expected presidential run, aligning himself
closely with
the Tea Party on the stump and in the media. However, on the key issue of
defense spending, Pawlenty is siding with the Republican establishment over Tea
Party types, who generally believe cuts to the bloated Pentagon budget should
be on the table. From Politico (via Steve Benen):

A day
after Haley Barbour called for cuts in defense spending, Tim Pawlenty went the
other way.

"I don't think we should be talking about
cutting the Pentagon's budget," the former Minnesota governor told
POLITICO after a speech at the Aiken Republican Club here. "I think we
should be talking about looking for those areas where we might some
efficiencies or redeploying money spent on defense to higher-priority areas
within defense. In other words keep the
defense budget intact, but if we find some savings, some efficiencies, some
ways to redeploy money we should do that."

For a politician who likes to talk
tough about fiscal responsibility, it's difficult
to overstate how weak Pawlenty's stance is. Essentially, the former governor is
acknowledging that there is waste in the defense budget, but rather than
eliminating it, he wants to find new ways to spend the money. Pawlenty's
position stands in stark contrast to other conservative
deficit hawks, who agree that any serious deficit
reduction plan should include defense spending.

Pawlenty might have
been responding to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a likely primary opponent,
who is not known as a Tea Partier but recently endorsed defense cuts. "We can
save money on defense and if we Republicans don't propose saving money on
defense, we'll
have no credibility on anything else," Barbour
said.